A Canberra team for the A-League?

B League is out of the question for us canberrans, we want a team in the a league n thats that. yesterday i became foundation member 400 n my dad is 399, i hope i never get to see that money again (if the bid fails we get the money returned). from wat i have heard around the canberra football community the money is no problem. so i cant wait till friday when ivan slavich meets with the FFA and wat outcome the meeting will have. we have over 10.000 juniors more then all the other 3 football codes combined. it is the most played junior sport in canberra. netball is second and hardly a threat to football. so if only 5000 juniors and mum or dad go to the game thats a 10.000 crowd already. where as perth glory last season did not have a crowd over 10.000. plus we are the nations capital and if NZ has a team we definetly deserve a team. the ACT has so many talented players , if we had a team players like patafta, kemp, ontong would definetly love to play here at home rather then jets victory or adelaide. players like andrew barisic, matty grbesa, nathan caldwell all in the victorian league. beaton, pilkington and giampaolo are all currently being looked at by the mariners and jets. i think all those boys would love to stay here, plus we have paul ivanic current top goalscorer in the act premier league, marcin zygmunt and jon reis impressing in the rockets games against the mariners. carl valeri, ned zelic and joe simunic all raised and born in canberra im sure if help was needed they would jump on board. we definetly have a case and fingers crossed we get a team cheers for reading

Eamonn Just watched your link great stuff ........To me the interesting point is the Chief Minister of the ACT John Stanhope on the site saying they'll chuck in the dosh if the fans are there

Towser, Great in-depth reply. I appreciate the insight re Asian connections. I do beleive the A League has already given Foxtel quite a few domestic wins though, the Grand Final for example. I'm not entirely convinced it cant stand on its own two feet in OZ. The Asian connection for non core soccer fans like myself doesn't do a lot. i guess its mostly an unknown , little rivalry involved, etc. Interesting times for sport in Australia, I 'd have to say that soccer's recent rise has made the Australian sporting scene a much more interesting place. cheers Redb

A World Cup bid without the Capital? How is that going to succeed.?But don't worry guys the money is rolling in. Two more sig. investors today, we only talk sig when it's half a mill don't we:) ACT Government to assist with multimillion deal. And Corporate support has only just begun. Up to the fans now. 300 Foundation Memberships..watch this at with the advertising set to start and the thing getting momentum expect more investors if this number starts to rise as it should.. and rapidly if the marketing works. An interesting journey. Great read Stama but I'm biased hope to see you all at the first game. World Cup South Africa followe d by a month later by Canberra's first game, Canberra v Sydney FC what do you think the crowd will be?

Redb No stretch to me at all. I'm deadly serious about that comment. Lets look at it logically over the last 3 years. Where did the growth for football come from. Firstly from an increased TV deal which hinged entirely on the Socceroos playing in Asia. The ratings for their main Asian Cup & WC qualifiers validate Foxtels investment. Without this the A-league would be now gone the way of the dinosaur. Secondly greatly increased gate takings for Socceroo matches based entirely on participation in Asia. Thirdly greatly increased sponsorship due to being in the AFC(ie greater exposure for Qantas as an example throughout the region). Fourthly,why did Clive Palmer invest in the Gold Coast team. Quite simply much of his business is generated through Asia. He sees an A-League team(and he has stated this) as a vehicle to network further in the region. Last but not least the possibility(yet to be confirmed) of greater financial incentives for not only winning,but participating in the ACL(ie muted to be 20 million US dollars in total initially). Only a fool .bites the hand that feeds you & the FFA is not run by fools today.

Towser, You've obviously got the big picture hat on and I respect that, however hanging the entire fate of soccer in this country on the Asian connection seems a bit of a stretch. Is it not perfectly viable for the A League to expand to 12-14 teams over the next 5 to 8 years and build from there a secure path as well? By stretching too far on big picture, you could say domination goals, FFA could run out of money and thwart its steady but safe progress. Redb

Redb Maybe maybe not. I dont see hoping for billionaires to invest as unrealistic. One has already stepped in on the Gold Coast. I said forget whether it will or not work & gave the reasons why -there is no option there has to be a second division whether we like it or not. Otherwise the game is a dead duck . Its growth depends on Asia I can only repeat what I stated before. They call the shots. No Asia bye bye football in Australia. I also stated that the criteria for new teams be the same as for the present A-League teams. So in simple terms there are 3 options. A -we comply(we have no choice) and new teams are introduced as they become financially viable. We then can join in the growth of the ACL as a competitor(at present only 11 countries domestic Leagues out of 46 are deemed to meet the AFC's requirements) meaning as the A-League expands we can have more teams in the ACL. Or B-we comply but cannot find enough teams(for whatever reason) to form a second division. This will seriously hinder the games progress Or C- We say we are Aussies we do things our way & stick our heads up the dark regions of our anatomy, which as far as football goes as I see it the game has been doing prior to the Crawford report. Going back to Oceania reminds me of a 40 year toothache. No thanks. However you are right, if money cannot be found from whatever source ,the sport will not reach its potential in the region. THe FFA knows it has to try to make a second division work in order for us to grow football to at least the same level as Japan. Otherwise countries like Thailand or Indonesia will fill the breach make no mistake.

Midfielder, we'll need to keep a close eye on Millster to ensure he does not post cross code comments from now on any codes issues tab. :-) Redb

Midfielder fair enough, I just went off the top of my head - whether it's 2, 3 or 4 mill - they are millions on top of our small population.

millster ok fair play, but i still feel Nth Q the timing is right. for another reason and thats because of rugby league, regardless whether the sonny b incident happened or not. qld has a strong league presence and the trouble facing RL clubs in nsw it makes more sense to swing the capital of league to queensland. to bring in another football team it would be 3 teams each. as pippinu said on another page melbourne is flooded with aussie rules, not to say another team from melbourne wont work. when melbournes 2nd team comes on board i feel it has to be at the same time west sydney enter the comp...smell the rivalry.

Pippinu NZ population closer to 4.5 million.

Towser, Whilst you dismiss the discussion of the finance required as "Forget whether it will or will not work" , money remains at the heart of the matter. Hoping for billionaires is a tad unrealistic. I also find it difficult to understand how a new team is expected to automaticially grow support. If a Canberra team gets in the A League, works with the communtity, gets sponsors,etc I can see that working, but if Canberra start off in the 2nd tier competition it sends the signal that Canberra is not good enough for the top league. Redb

MIllster It's looking increasingly likely that as soon as the A-League goes to 12 teams, Melbourne will have its second team. The curious thing about Victoria is that Melbourne is the major population centre by a very big margin. Geelong, the 2nd city, only has about 150,000, and it's extremely close to the western fringes of Melbourne in any event. So it probably means that a 2nd Victorian team can only really come from Melbourne, which is certainly large enought to support it, but the issue becomes one of identity. In all likelihood it will share the same ground as the Victory and it will be called Melbourne somthing or another, in other words, it might find it hard to quickly build a supporter base with the Victory having already enjoyed success. There is one existing Melbourne team that could have an instant membership of 10,000, but that's a debate for another day - I don't feel strong enough at the moment!

Pippinu - good points and I should have made it clear that I'll welcome anyone in the league as it is now, which is a million times better than what I had before. And as I'm not on the inside, yes its quite possible that the demographic and footballing case for NQ above others is in fact stronger than I perceive. Whatever the detail, I do still feel strongly though about the relative lack of Victorian clubs in the league, especially given the population size and ethnicities in Melbourne. If we get to a point where Sydney's broadly-defined hinterland has 4 or 5 clubs whereas Melbourne still only has the one, then there is something wrong. Can't believe I'm saying that as a Sydneysider ;-)

Millster Re the Nix, it might be another country, but it adds an additional 3 million potential viewers/supporters to our tiny spread out population, so the inclusion of an NZ team is a no brainer from a financial point of view. Also, the minute you move away from the five mainland capitals, there is a sudden dearth of cites with a population of 500,000 and that's where Wellington and /or Auckland make sense (don't be surprised to see both in a future comp). Lastly, re North Queensland - it's actually quite a strong footballing area with its only competition for the supporters' dollar being rugby league - it makes a lot of sense on those grounds alone.

Cpaa - hang on I'll give you the chance to agree with me again. I said that I thought it was more sensible to have a FIRST ACT team over a THIRD Queensland team. But I did not mean to say that the ACT was the only alternative to NQ. In fact there would be a few teams that I'd put higher on the list. Redressing the fact that Melbourne has only one team, for example, takes much higher priority for me than these other areas. So, starting at the 8 we have now, if I had my way, the fill to 14 would go in this order: 9. Gold Coast 10. Melbourne Ports-Geelong 11. Western Sydney-Blue Mtns 12. ACT-South Coast 13. Illawarra-Sutherland 14. North Queensland OR Fremantle (whichever has the better case and better fits the long term vision) As I've written many times before, with all due respect and affection to our kiwi friends, I'd also look to displace the Phoenix as it continues to make no sense to me to include another country in our domestic league, and especially one from another confederation that we may at some stage be expected to play off against at national level for a World Cup spot (as may indeed happen if we come 3rd in our Asian group next year)

It's certainly true that the AFC has stipulated two-tiered comps with promotion and relegation as a key criterion in allowing 4 teams from any one country into the ACL - so from that perspective, it's correct to say that the FFA has no option but to plan for it as best it can. At the same time, in pure logistical terms, I share the concerns expressed by Redb, I really have trouble envisaging it working. I can picture the possibiliy of both Sydney or Melbourne clubs finding themselves into the 2nd division, or worse still, a vulnerable team like Perth going down for a few years, never to make it back and essentially die a slow, painful, inhumane death. Apart form amateur competitions (in which the financial imperative is not as important) does anyone know of any semi-professional sports comps in Australia (that have survived 100 years) that have promotion and relegation across two or more divisions? The VFA had a first and 2nd division for about 30 years, in what was a semi-professional comp, but it eventually died. The old NSL had a rough and ready form of promotion and relegation during its 30 year life - and that might give us a bit of a hint has to how the modern version might work - that the B-League will consists of an endless cast of essentailly glorified State League teams trying their luck for a year or two in a fully professional league, coming and going through the rotating door that will be the B-League, with the 10 biggest A-League teams never having to join them, and with the four weakest A-League teams taking it in turn to dip into the B-League but then rapidly getting promotion back up - meaning the odd struggler that makes it into the A-League will be lucky to survive more than a year. Talk of having two division of, say, 24 teams (14 in the A-League and 10 in the B-League), all similarly placed in terms of revenue and playing strength sounds like absolute pie in the sky to me.

its rare that i disagree with millster(very rare) but another two queensland teams over the capital actually does make more sense. even though townsville is part of qld,north queensland should have been a seperate state all together. As towser said our capital was formed as a half way house between australias 2 largest cities rather than a main city as a london or paris.i guess the rivalry between sydney and melbourne dates way back, yet i agree the capital does need a team and with w-leagues canberra united a positive start. if the slavic group can get tribal support fo the women then they have a real case for a HAL team, but still i see a west sydney, melbourne and woollongong team ahead of the que.

Although Frank Lowy indicated last year that a second Sydney and Melbourne team is highly likely after the next two A-League franchises (we now know who one of these will be), the feeling that has started to come through is that regional coverage is a more important consideration for franchises than local population. I think for that reason, the chances might be higher than expected, provided all other requisite boxes can be ticked, for a Canberra or Tassie bid for an A-League licence in the long term future. I hope this is the case.

Re the B League. The AFC have stated that this is whats required(its in their criteria) for a professional football system in the Asian region. Forget whether it will or will not work. Yes you are entitled to an opinion but on this issue it is a waste of energy. It is not a deep mystery that the game has only developed at all levels since the Crawford report because we were accepted into the AFC. No AFC no growth. They call the shots. Better to spend time formulating a workable plan for a B-league as Japan did. The proviso of course is that it must be supported it will not make money initially. That requires big dollars. That can only come from sponsors & an increased TV deal in the future. Also whos to say that once the penny drops that more Billionaires like Clive Palmer on the Gold Coast wont bankroll an A-League team. They may or may not be Australians there are plenty of Asian billionaires to whom bankrolling an A-League team like Canberra is mere pocket money in comparison to buying an EPL team for instance. Football is this country can only grow on the back of Asia. We need to adjust our mindset to this & plan accordingly & this means fans also, not just the hierachy. Having been brought up on promotion & relegation it works by developing a belief & pride in your local area through the local team,much as CCM have done. The idea is to create a second tier league in reality no different in playing standard to the A-League so unlike the EPL the gap between the 2 leagues in playing standard is minimal. Its no good bringing in an underfinanced A2 team & hoping. The same financial criteria should apply for teams in both leagues. So in reality you acheive the 12/14 team A-league first. The major difficulty I see( provided back up finance is in place) is that a second division will need to be like the A-league in the first season,say 8 teams with their money on the table,ready to go. In relation to recruiting players & having the same budget as the first division A-League they would be in a far better position than the initial 8 A-league teams,as they will copy the improved recruiting processes these teams have already developed. By maintaining a uniform playing standard throughout both leagues,even a team that finishes last in the second division has hope that one day it can win the 'Toilet Seat" then onto the ACL. If it wins the ACL,then it can participate in the WCC. If it won that what an acheivement for say a team from a small place like the Central Coast or North Queensland. The incentive is there for any Australian football team to acheive worldwide recognition. There is no reason long term for this not to happen if their is realistic hope throughout the 2 divisions.